Harlot's Ghost

by Norman Mailer

  “I could have guessed,” said Modene. “You don’t look like a man who would vote for Jack Kennedy.”

  “Oh,” said Hunt, “I have nothing against him. In fact, I met Jack Kennedy years ago at a debutante’s party in Boston.”

  “What was he like then?” asked Modene.

  “Well, I can hardly tell you,” said Hunt. “For one thing, he must have had a little too much to imbibe because at the end of the evening he was in a corner chair and sound asleep. I will confess I did not discern at that moment, in those highly relaxed lineaments, any suggestion of a presidential candidate.”

  “I hope I can remember how you put it,” said Modene, “because I want to tell the story to Jack,” and she inclined her head to Hunt, led me past our good hostess, Regina, and into the night.

  “My God,” I said, “you are a snob.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I wouldn’t have anything to do with people like that if they lived in Grand Rapids.”

  32

  OUR EVENING WAS NOT NEARING CONCLUSION, HOWEVER. “THAT MAN WHO spoke to me at the end is your boss?” she asked.

  “We work together.”

  “He doesn’t look much like an FBI man.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “You are. That’s why you are with me. To learn all about Sam Giancana.”

  “You’re upset,” I said, “because the election is up in the air.”

  “Of course I am upset. And I am drunk. But that doesn’t change it. You do want to know an awful lot about Giancana.”

  “I couldn’t care less. All I really desire at this moment is to smoke some marijuana.”

  “No,” she said, “not while the election is in doubt. To make love right now would be equal to desecrating a grave.”

  “I think you are serious,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “I’m going to sleep,” I said.

  “No,” she said, “you are going to stay up and watch it with me.”

  “Well,” I said, “if we don’t make love, I am still going to smoke marijuana. That is the way I want to watch the returns.”

  “We must have an understanding,” she said. “I will take some too, but only for the purpose of watching the returns with you.”

  “That will work,” I said, “if you don’t get horny.”

  “I am not about to,” she said. “But I will tell you this much about Sam Giancana. The only reason I didn’t go to bed with him is because of a private feeling.”

  “Would you describe your private feeling?”

  “I felt that if I indulged myself with Sam, I might lose the election for Jack.”

  “Do you expect me to believe that?”

  “When things count, people must keep their promises. I told Jack that I wouldn’t sleep with Sam.”

  “Is Giancana that attractive to you?”

  “Of course he is. He is a superior person.”

  We went to my apartment that night and smoked marijuana. By one in the morning, the TV analysts were saying that the final result would depend on Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Illinois. “At present, however,” said the television voice, “Illinois looks to be the swing state.”

  Modene nodded profoundly. “Sam said he would bring it in for Kennedy.”

  “I thought Mayor Daley was going to take care of that.”

  “Mayor Daley will take care of some parts of Chicago and Sam will bring in the other areas. The Negroes and the Italians and the Latins and a lot of the Polish wards take orders from Sam’s people. He has the leverage on the West Side.”

  “Sam told you all this?”

  “Of course not. He wouldn’t talk to me about things like that.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “Walter explained it to me. Walter used to work in Eastern’s office in Chicago. The airline people have to know all of that kind of stuff in order to get along with the local unions.”

  “Do you still see Walter?”

  Modene said, “Not since I started seeing Jack again.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I know that you get more from me than he could ever give you.”

  “What makes you certain?”

  “Why else would you spend time with me?”

  “Because I am trying to discover if I have the temperament for marriage, and you might be suitable should I ever decide to come down to earth.”

  “Do you want to get married?” I asked.

  “To you?” she asked.

  “Why not?”

  “If you are not the poorest man I know, you are certainly the stingiest.”

  We began to laugh. When we were done, I asked, “Do you really want Jack to win?”

  “Of course. Do you think I want to look at myself as the mistress of the also-ran?”

  “Is it better to be courtesan to the king?”

  “That is absurd. I do not see myself as a courtesan.”

  I remember feeling a peculiar glee. “I guess you really indulge the hope that he will divorce his wife and marry you. You do see yourself as First Lady?”

  “Stop being nasty.”

  “It could come down to that. First Lady or courtesan.”

  “I do not look ahead.”

  “You can’t. His wife is pregnant, and tomorrow, he and she will be on television.”

  “I never realized before how cruel you are.”

  “That is because you force me to look at the back of your neck while you are waiting for another man to come onto TV. He is not even in the room.”

  The voice coming to us from the television set now said, “It looks as if Texas may be swinging toward Kennedy. Perhaps the choice of Lyndon Johnson as running mate will yet pay off.”

  “You can see how wise he was,” said Modene, “to pick that awful man, Johnson.”

  “I don’t care. I’m angry at having to look at the back of your neck. I want to take a little more marijuana and fuck.”

  “I feel a little demented,” she said, “and you are causing it.”

  “That’s the marijuana speaking.”

  “No. It is because history is being made tonight, and I want to feel a part of it. Yet, I can’t.”

  “Neither of us,” I said, “is any part of it at all.”

  “I am. I certainly am—if you would stop badgering me.”

  “Come on,” I said, “do you know how many girlfriends Jack Kennedy has?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “One in every port.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.” There had been FBI lists coming in from Harlot lately.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you know?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “I have seen a few reports.”

  “Am I on them?” She began to laugh at the expression on my face, and I realized that whatever in her was most loyal to John Fitzgerald Kennedy was therefore most furious at him, and so she could enjoy the idea that she was now a center of attention to strangers who were observing her activities in reports. It occurred to me that she never minded undressing with the shades up.

  “Do you mind,” she said, “if I talk about Sam? He is a very funny man.”

  “I would not have thought of him as funny.”

  “Oh, he is. He is so foul-mouthed when he chooses to be. But in a humorous way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Give me another toke.” She puffed on my stick of marijuana. “He loves to talk about sex. Like you, he wants to know what Jack is like.”

  “Do you tell him?”

  “I lie. I pretend that Jack is similar to you, and can be very attentive.”

  “Although he isn’t?”

  “Of course not. He’s too hard-working. He’s too tired. He needs a woman who can devote herself to him.”

  “In which way?”

  “Well, you know which way.”

  I now felt the pang of knowing exactly.

  “What does Sam say?” I asked.

  She turned her eyes fro
m the television set long enough to look at me. Her expression had never been more remorseless nor more attractive. “Sam says, ‘Honey, if I ever put my mouth on your yum-yum, you will, guaranteed, be fucking hooked forever.’”

  “Chop me down,” I said, “Sam says that?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Are you tempted?”

  “Sam is a man who would want every last bit of me. That is appealing.”

  “Don’t I want every last bit of you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “you do. And you certainly try to get it. But, after all, in your case, why not?” She began to laugh from the depths of a heart which, at this moment, did not sound free of rancor.

  It was long past two in the morning when the announcer stated: “No concession has yet come from Nixon. Illinois, however, is now considered to be definitely in Kennedy’s total, and that, added to the victory in Texas, plus reports that Pennsylvania and Michigan look definite for the Democrats, enables us to go off the air with a firm expectation that the election has been won by John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

  Modene gave a whoop and turned off the set. “I know,” she said at last, “what he is going to say in the morning.”

  “What will he say?”

  “‘Now my wife and I prepare for a new administration and a new baby.’”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Maybe he rehearsed it with me. He’s a devil.”

  “Well, so are we all.”

  She gave me one passionate long pent-up kiss, and with that, we made love, and I wanted every last bit of her. After all, in my case, why not?

  33

  November 25, 1960

  Son,

  I’ve been holding off on writing, but then things have been quiet here at Quarters Eye since the election. In effect, we are waiting to see where we are.

  Found myself in low spirits over Thanksgiving. Kept thinking of Mary, my old sweet whale of a wife, and now she’s lost to me. She is thinking of getting married to a little Japanese businessman who is probably sitting on more wealth than the state of Kansas, and here am I, old blow-spout of the other half of this beached-whale duo, feeling egregiously elegiacal. Clark Gable died last week, and I discovered to my surprise that I had always felt a large identification with the man.

  Now, comprehend it. I really don’t know anything about Clark Gable, and even felt envious of him last summer. There he was, making a flick with Marilyn Monroe, lucky dog. Son, if they ever held an election in this country for the woman you would most want to bed up with for a night, how could that young lady fail to win? So, yes, I envied him. Now he’s dead. Maybe she kept his old heart running up and down too many hills. And I find that I’m mourning him although I don’t know bird-all about the fellow. All the same, actors fascinate me. Their work is in some sense near to our work, and yet they are not like us at all. While my contact with actors has been limited, I have found them disappointing. They are without our core of motivation. Lacking such point of reference, an actor can’t keep trying to be someone other than himself without having to pay for it. Such, at least, is my concept of it. All the same, I did love this guy Gable. It’s hard to tell you cynical younger dogs about the kind of identification we older fellows have with movie stars of his ilk. Sometimes, back in the Second World War, I would talk to him in my head. Particularly after I’d pulled off something good. “Would you have done as well, Clark?” I’d ask. Who knows where these conversations originate? They’re silly enough, in any case.

  I suspect that part of my meandering frame of mind is still due to the Las Vegas fiasco on Oct. 31. I’ve been taking flak from it. Three questions hang over me these days. One: Was it an act of Providence? Two: Did Giancana throw sand into the gears? Or three: Is the FBI now witting? We don’t have the answers, but I am certainly paying for all three suppositions. First: Providence. My confreres are now concluding that Cal Hubbard may carry an undue share of bad luck. Secundum: Terrible judgment on Cal’s part to pick a hoodlum like G. I’m inclined to agree even if I did no more than inherit Maheu who did the picking. But then, we amputate the “yets” and “buts” in our kind of work. Just take the blame. It’s faster and neater.

  Now, Three, worst of all. What if the FBI has been tracking this one from the beginning? The last contingency has frozen all activity.

  Result is, I have been receiving an undeniable chill from Allen’s office, Bissell’s office, and Barnes’ bailiwick. We all recognize that if worse comes to worst, I’ll have to carry the slop pail. We must partition Allen off from this. That’s fine by me, and a reasonable exercise of duty, but it puts a pall on your best feelings when the chill comes in advance.

  It’s not so bad that I can’t handle it, but, Rick, if there is such a thing as male menopause, I could converse with medical authorities about it. I feel a sense of doom, and it is infecting my natural optimism for exciting projects.

  Well, let me introduce you to more interesting matters. Despite my nearness to Outer Purdah, the stories still get back to the old boy. Allen Dulles and our President-Elect John F. Kennedy had a powwow down in Palm Beach on the 17th of November. I’ll bet you picked up not a single reverberation from your slot sixty miles away in Miami, but we heard about it up here. Allen didn’t come back with a won game. As I get the story, Kennedy expressed a few doubts about the oncoming Cuban push and wanted to discuss demobilizing the Brigade. Allen responded with his Dutch uncle mode: “Are you, Mr. President-Elect, truly prepared to tell this fine group of young Cuban men that they must disband against their will? Why, all they ask, at every risk to their lives, is to have the opportunity to restore the democratic government of their country.”

  Kennedy obviously has salt. He didn’t flap. Took in all that Allen could deliver and then came back with the following: Said he was prepared, in principle, to move ahead, but had to emphasize how very crucial it was that no United States involvement show. Overtly aggressive moves against Cuba could stimulate the Sovs to carry out a few threats.

  Let me add this, Kennedy says: If our involvement in Cuba does show its face, we will, of course, be obliged to win.

  Couldn’t agree more, replies Allen.

  Well, Mr. Dulles, says Kennedy, if we want to win all that much, why begin with the Brigade? If a sizable military operation is what is really called for, why even bother with the CIA in the first place?

  He had Allen painted into a corner on that one. He could come away with no more than a highly qualified go-ahead. No visible American involvement. In any event, the invasion has been put off for a few months. By the time Kennedy gets his inauguration out of the way and has an administration functioning, we’ll be in early spring of 1961.

  During this interim, the Brigade is likely to get restless. I call it a toss-up. If their discipline doesn’t hold up, they will self-destruct in Guatemala. Interesting times lie ahead.

  Yours,

  No-Bucks Halifax

  34

  SERIAL: J/39,354,824

  ROUTE: LINE/GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT

  TO: GHOUL-A

  FROM: FIELD

  SUBJECT: HEEDLESS

  10:11 A.M. DEC. 20, 1960

  Regret to inform you that FIELD has lost all access to BLUEBEARD. Catalytic factor: Buddhist interlopers.

  Can report that on December 19, BLUEBEARD returned alone to the Fontainebleau after shopping with RAPUNZEL. In the lobby were two men wearing felt hats. A minute after she went up to her room, the front desk was on the phone. A Mr. Mack and a Mr. Rouse wished to see her. They were FBI, stated the front desk. She did not have to open her door, said the clerk, but it might save time. Otherwise, they would come back.

  She agreed to meet with Mack and Rouse. They soon informed her that they were inquiring into her relation to RAPUNZEL. She claims to have told them nothing. Later, to FIELD, she described this interview as “wholly disagreeable.” Unfortunately, her suspicions of FIELD are now inflamed. She has accused him of being “in cahoots” with Mack and Rouse. Sh
e declares that she will not see him any longer.

  These events took place yesterday evening. In FIELD’s opinion, the relationship is concluded. There is no room left for a cover story.

  If the new situation holds constant over the next month, will you require a Final Report?

  FIELD

  Harlot would hardly be satisfied with this description, but then his displeasure at the loss of BLUEBEARD was going to be larger than his pique at the lack of detail.

  I could have provided him with more. In the hour I spent with Modene, every speech of Mack and Rouse was repeated. When she called me at Zenith not long after they left, she had been calm, so calm indeed that I could feel her hysteria stirring. “I’ve had visitors,” she said, “and you probably know them. Can you come over before I get too drunk?”

  So soon as I arrived, she began to describe the encounter.

  Mack spoke first. He was tall and heavy.

  “You are Modene Murphy?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are on friendly terms with Sam Giancana?”

  “Who is he?”

  “He is also known as Sam Gold.”

  “Don’t know him.”

  “How about Sam Flood?”

  When she paused, he repeated, “How about Sam Flood?”

  “I know him.”

  “He is the same man as Sam Giancana.”

  “All right. What of it?”

  “Would you be interested to know how Sam Giancana makes his living?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “He is one of the ten most wanted criminals in America.”

  “Why don’t you pick him up?”

  “We will,” said the FBI man named Rouse. He was of medium height, slim, and had sharp teeth. “We will as soon as we are ready. For now, we can use your help.”

  “I know nothing that could help you,” said Modene.

  She saw a sneer on Mack’s face. “Do you,” he asked, “accept gifts from Sam?”

  “If they are appropriate, and not too expensive.”

  “Are you aware that he has a Las Vegas tootsie?” asked Rouse.

  “What is a tootsie?”

  “A tootsie is a girl,” said Mack, “who takes money for favors. Did Mr. Giancana ever slip you any green?”